Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 7 1889.djvu/69

Rh Singleton. . .  .  .  .  . On one occasion she was met by a countryman driving a goose before her. The path was narrow, and the goose did not get out of the way; the lout struck the seeming bird with his stick, when lo ! to his amazement, it was changed into a broken pitcher, with milk flowing on every side. It was thus the witch conveyed the stolen milk to her abode." — (P. 41.)

The Devil's Stone. — At Staple Fitzpaine, a few miles west of Taunton, in Somerset, there is by the roadside a big "Sarten," known as "the Devil's Stone," because, having come overnight with a lot of big stones on his back, wherewith to pelt the builders of a church which he heard was to be built, against his wish, in that then benighted place, he suddenly saw in the morning the beautiful tower of the finished church; and in his chagrin and amazement he was so taken aback that he dropped his budget of stones from his back ; and this big one, in particular, from off his shoulder, remains on the spot to this day, as a strong (though dumb) witness of the fact ! F. Baldur Story. — The following Indian legend may be compared with the story of Baldur: — "Taittirīya Brāhmana, I. vii. 1. Indra promised the demon Namuci not to kill him by day nor by night, nor with what was wet or what was dry. He killed him in the morning twilight, by sprinkling over him the foam of the sea." Siberian Folk-Lore. — The following fragments of Folk-Lore occur in Mr. Henry Seebohm's Siberia in Asia, 1882 : — "In the evening the man whom I had commissioned to shoot crows for me came from his village without any. I asked him why he had neglected my orders. He told me that it was unlucky to shoot a crow; that a gun which had once shot a crow would never shoot any other bird afterwards ; and he assured me that he had once shot a crow, and had been obliged to throw his gun away." — (P. 71.) Mr. Seebohm comments on the use of brass vessels, that in the East